


Wicked Blood

by xylodemon



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-21
Updated: 2013-02-21
Packaged: 2017-12-03 04:34:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/694197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xylodemon/pseuds/xylodemon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rickon Bloodhands became a villain, the nightmare that sparked a thousand myths.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wicked Blood

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this Wildling!Rickon photoset](http://xylodemon.tumblr.com/post/43671285939/seaworth-he-builds-an-army-and-takes-it-north) and the accompanying tags.
> 
> I'm not really sure how to tag this -- it's set roughly 150 years in the future, when a Stark child asks for a bedtime story about the War of Five Kings, and Rickon Bloodhands, the King-Beyond-the-Wall who no one ever talks about. Spoilers past _A Clash of Kings_.

"Tell me a story," Aidith said.

Red Lya nodded as she settled into her chair and pulled another fur around her thin shoulders. She was a Stark herself, a granddaughter of Jon Stark, the King in the North called the Burned Wolf, the one who'd been a Snow and a Stark and a Targaryen all at once. She'd married an Umber in her youth, but she'd returned to Winterfell after a fever took her husband and son and Last Hearth passed to one of her good-brothers. She'd seen at least one hundred years, though she claimed not to remember exactly how many. 

"What kind of story, child? I know happy stories, and sad stories, and stories about little princesses who stay up later than is good and proper."

"Tell me a scary story." Aidith was almost nine, and almost nine was really too old for stories, but there was a terrible storm outside, the first true storm of winter, which was also the first winter of Aidith's life. She didn't think she'd sleep with the wind and snow howling at her windows. "Tell me about the King-Beyond-the-Wall."

"There have been many Kings-Beyond-the-Wall. There was Joramund, and the Horned King, and also Bael the Bard and Raymun Redbeard. There was Mance Rayder, too; he was the King-Beyond-the-Wall my lord grandfather knew."

"You've told me all those stories before," Aidith pointed out. Mance Rayder stories were Red Lya's favorite King-Beyond-the-Wall stories, perhaps because Mance's son, Aemon Flowers, had often visited Winterfell when she was a little girl. "Tell me one about Rickon Bloodhands."

Red Lya was quiet for a moment, a frown tugging her wrinkled mouth. "Where did you hear that name?"

"When Lord Thenn last came to visit," Aidith said, burrowing deeper into her bed furs. "I heard two of his men telling stories in the stables, but they stopped when they saw me listening."

"As well they did. We don't talk about Rickon Bloodhands."

"Why not?"

Red Lya closed her eyes. She went quiet again, long enough that Aidith thought she might've fallen asleep, which was something old people seemed to do quite often, but then she sighed, a soft and tired sound. "Because Rickon Bloodhands was a Stark."

"No, he couldn't have been. Maester Gryg made me learn the names of all the Starks, even the ones who never ruled, and there wasn't a Rickon."

"What did Maester Gryg tell you of Eddard Stark?"

Aidith sat up a little. "Eddard Stark was the last Lord of Winterfell. You were named for his sister, Lyanna. He married Catelyn Tully, and he served as Hand of the King to Robin Baratheon, back when there was just one king instead of two."

"Robert, child. Robert Baratheon. What else did he say?"

"He was falsely accused of treason and beheaded. His children kept direwolves as pets." Aidith thought for a moment, then said, "He had four children. Only four, because your lord grandfather was really his nephew, not his bastard. There was Robb, who was crowned King in the North and killed at a wedding, and then Sansa, who married Stannis Baratheon and became Queen of the South. Arya ran away to Pentos with an outlaw knight who was also a blacksmith. Brandon couldn't walk, because Kingslayer Lannister pushed him from a tower window. He disappeared in the War of Five Kings, after Theon Turncloak sacked Winterfell and Bolton men burned it."

"Lord Eddard had five children," Red Lya said quietly, her hands twisted in the furs around her neck. "Rickon Stark was the youngest. He was only four when Winterfell burned."

"Did he have a direwolf? Like the others?"

"He did, yes. A monstrous black beast, with green eyes full of hatred and spite." Red Lya sighed and leaned back in her chair. "Some say Brandon and Rickon hid in the Wolfswood. Others say they hid in the crypts, protected by the ancient Kings of Winter. Either way, they survived both the Ironborn and the Boltons. After the fire, Brandon went north and was not seen again. Rickon escaped with a serving woman, who took him across the Bay of Seals to Skagos."

"Skagos," Aidith whispered, shivering as gooseflesh bloomed on her arms. Her father's army had sailed to Skagos three years ago, when the lords there rebelled against his rule as King in the North, a war he'd won by taking Lord Magnar's only son as hostage and ward and by laying siege to House Crowl and House Stane. He never spoke of it, even when her older brothers asked, but his guards sometimes muttered about it in their cups, how the Skagosi drank blood and ate human flesh and used queer magics to raise the dead. "But that's a bad place."

"It's a horrible place, child. Cold and bloody and cruel," Red Lya said, shaking her head. "Skagos breeds hard, angry men, and young Rickon was angry before he arrived there."

"But why?"

"Some say he was born that way. Others say it was the direwolf that turned him wrong, that he was a warg who spent too much time inside animal skin." Red Lya paused as a gust of wind shrieked past the window, rattling the sash so hard that Aidith jumped. "I think he was lonely and scared. He lost everything he loved in the War of Five Kings. Half his family died, and the half that lived was out of his reach when Winterfell burned. So he went to Skagos, and learned to live without honor or laws."

Aidith rolled onto her side, hugging her pillow to her chest. "How long was he there?"

"Twelve years, or near enough it makes no matter."

"And what did he do there?"

"No one knows," Red Lya said, tucking her long braid inside her sleeping cap of Myrish lace. Her hair was so thin and white that the pink of her scalp showed underneath it in the sunlight, though she claimed it had once been as fiery and bright as a new copper Star. "He learned to hunt and climb and fish, and how to speak the Old Tongue, as the smallfolk still do on that wretched island. Someone trained him at arms, as well -- a Skagosi man, like as not, because he fought in their fashion, with hand-axes and spears instead of a sword. Beyond that, I think he ran with his wolf and dwelt on all he'd lost as a boy. He never forgot the names of his family, nor the names of those who killed them. The North remembers, child." She made a soft noise in the back of her throat. "The North remembers, even when it should not."

The fire snapped and popped, casting strange shadows over Red Lya's face. It was said that she'd been a great beauty in her youth, that twenty men had wished to wed her, and that her Umber husband had fought three duels for the honor, but she was tiny and wrinkled now, with stooped shoulders and spotted skin and leathery hands too gnarled to spin or sew. 

"Rickon returned in the dead of winter, with a raiding party Qhodin Magnar sent to the Karstark shore. They were a terrible sight, dressed in naught but pelts and hides, with black clay smeared on their bare arms and faces and blood staining their hands and mouths. Most went back to Skagos once the villages were sacked, but Rickon stayed behind -- Rickon, and nearly three thousand of Qhodin's men. They set fire to Karhold itself, then burned and pillaged all the way down to White Harbor. King Jon called his banners, but before he reached the White Knife, Rickon sank half the Manderly fleet and used the other half to sail north. He landed at Eastwatch-by-the-Sea, and put all the sworn brothers there to the sword. After that, he settled beyond the Wall, and the wildlings from The Gift began flocking to his side."

Aidith frowned. "But they couldn't. Jon Stark made an alliance with the Giftfolk through marriage, when he wed Mance Rayder's good-sister."

"He did, yes. But Queen Val had died by then," Red Lya said, adjusting the furs spread across her lap. "She gave Jon two strong sons, then died birthing twin daughters who never drew breath. His maester -- Sam, his name was, Fat Sam Tarly -- urged him to take another Northern bride, or a girl from one of the mountain clans, but Jon -- "

"He married King Stannis' first daughter," Aidith said impatiently. She knew this much from Maester Gryg's lessons. "The Greyscale Princess."

"Mind your tongue, child. Queen Shireen was a good woman, and she loved my lord grandfather well. She gave him three daughters and two more sons. The eldest, Beron Stark, took a frozen stag as his sigil and founded House Berstark of Berhome, where the Dreadfort once stood, and the other one, Jonos Stark, he joined the Night's Watch, and -- "

"He became Lord Commander at eighteen, the third youngest after Osric Stark and King Jon himself." Aidith sat up, leaning back against the pillows piled at the head of her bed. "What about Rickon?"

Red Lya paused for a moment, frowning as she stared into the fire. "He crowned himself King-Beyond-the-Wall. He rebuilt the old village at Whitetree, with a fine wooden longhall for himself and his wives. It's said he took three at once, like the Targaryens of old, two wildling women and an Umber girl who'd run away from Last Hearth because she wished to see the world. He had giants in his court, and wargs, and foul men from the high passes who wore clothes of skin and teeth and bone."

"And Night's Watch let him live?"

"The Watch was still weak then, child. Too many were lost in the Winter War against the White Walkers. They sent rangers to scout his movements and habits, but they made no open move against him. Not until five years later, when he forced their hand by attacking the Wall."

"He attacked the Wall? Why?"

"No one knows," Red Lya said, her chair creaking as she shifted under her mountain of furs. "It's said the Skagosi practice strange sorceries and blood magics. Some think he meant to capture sworn brothers as sacrifices, to raise an army of shadows and shades."

Aidith shivered; she was afraid of the older parts of the crypts, where the swords had rusted to dust and the Kings of Winter were free to roam between the stones. "And what did Jon do?"

"There was bad blood between Winterfell and the Watch then, but King Jon did his duty. He led his men north, beyond the Wall."

"Did he know Rickon was his kin?"

"Some say he suspected as much, once he heard the King-Beyond-the-Wall marched with a direwolf at his side." The wind gusted against the window again, whistling as it battered against the glass panes. "Others say he didn't realize until they first met in battle, when his own direwolf refused to fight its beastly brother. Either way, it was a terrible thing. They warred for days and days and days, while fresh snow screamed down at them from a dark sky and the old snow ran red with blood."

"Did Jon kill him?"

"Mayhaps, child. Mayhaps." Red Lya sighed softly, then said, "Jon claimed he did, the few times he was willing to speak of it. As he told it, his host slaughtered the Skagosi horde to ten men, who were made hostages against Qhodin Magnar's good behavior, and that he took the head of Rickon Bloodhands himself. But there are some -- only a few, mind -- who say Jon couldn't bring himself to kill a man he'd once considered a brother. They believe he told Rickon to take his men into the Frostfangs, and never show themselves below the Fist of First Men."

They were quiet for a moment, Aidith listening to the wind and Red Lya watching the fire. Then, Aidith asked, "What do you think?"

"I think he lived," Red Lya admitted, her voice raspy and thin. "I think Edwyle Wolfskin, the man called King-Beyond-the-Wall now, is Rickon Bloodhands' kin, perhaps a grandson of a great-grandson. We'll never know for sure, because the wildings don't marry as we do, nor do they keep records of births and deaths, but it's said that Edwyle Wolfskin is a warg with auburn hair, and he lives in a ice castle carved into the high passes of the Frostfangs." She shifted in her chair, as if meaning to stand. "Have I tired you yet, child? It's past time you went to sleep."

"No," Aidith said quickly, sitting up and rubbing her eyes. Outside, the storm was still howling. "Tell me another."

"About who, child?"

"Tell me about Benjen Coldhands, the ranger who became an Other, but fought for King Jon during the Winter War."


End file.
